Wednesday June 18th, 2014 - Tonight at New York Live Arts, three of the outstanding female choreographers of our time - Jacqulyn Buglisi, Elisa Monte and Jennifer Muller - joined forces to present an excellent evening of dance. The variety of moods and music in the five works presented kept the large audience in an attentive and appreciative state.
We Are Us...Our Father's Sons (world premiere) is a Jacqulyn Buglisi duet for two men which the choreographer has set to music by father-and-son composers Norman Dello Joio (1913 – 2008) and Justin Dello Joio. Norman Dello Joio, who won the Pulitzer in 1957, composed the music for Martha Graham’s Seraphic Dialogue and Diversion of Angels. Atmospheric lighting (by Jack Mehler) enhanced the expressive dancing of Ari Mayzick and Juan Rodriguez. Clad in white shirts and soft trousers, the two men made vibrant use of the NYLA space (open to the walls) in choreography that showed both the tenderness and the passing antagonisms which are part of every father-son relationship. The work also serves as a reminder that we often don't appreciate or understand our fathers - I know I didn't - until they are gone from us.
I recently had the good fortune to visit Jennifer Muller's studio and watch a rehearsal of the two new works she presented tonight. In the first of these, Miserere Nobis (world premiere), the choreographer has set one of the most sublime musical works ever written: Gregorio Allegri's Miserere. In a striking visual response to the music, Ms. Muller eschews wafting angels and excessive piety to find the core of this deeply spiritual work which - to me - has a universal message which extends beyond religious belief.
An ensemble of women are clad in long black skirts and halter tops the straps of which form the sign of the cross on each dancer's back. They wear long black stockings with blood-red feet and tight black caps. Moving slowly from out of the shadows, the remarkably fluent Seiko Fujita speaks to us with every inch of her body; from her trembling hands to her wonderfully poetic dorsal muscles, Seiko embodies both hope and fear in the face of death. Caroline Kehoe, Shiho Tanaka and their six young colleagues join Seiko in this powerful, ritualistic work. The audience seemed transported, viewing the piece in reverential silence. In my estimation, Miserere Nobis stands high among the masterworks Jennifer Muller has created in her long career. I'm so wanting to see it again.
In Lonely Planet, Elisa Monte's marvelous troupe of dancers take over the space; to music by David Van Tieghem the sleekly-costumed dancers evoke the contemporary world in dance that veers from stylized to sensuous. Diminishing personal connectivity and the proliferation of meaningless over-communication - as well as the peril of the natural world as technology overwhelms us - are themes of this work. Against an almost psychedelic backdrop of projections, the dancers form clusters and seek to relate to one another in powerful partnering motifs: their beautiful bodies entice us throughout.
Butterflies and Demons (Jacqulyn Buglisi) combines the choreographer's powerful respose to the global horrors of human trafficking with a plea for social justice. In a striking opening tableau, each of Ms. Buglisi's twelve dancers is seen in a square of dazzling light. To Daniel Bernard Roumain's unsettling, darkish score, the stories of these people unfold. A sense of urgency without hope imbues the women who can find no means of escape from their fate. Even as the individual dancers periodically leave the stage, they continue to inhabit their roles in the wings, amplifying the grimness of their existence. The increasing angst of the work reaches its climax in an apocalyptic explosion. Among the high-calibre dancers, Darion Smith showed a particularly strong presence as well as the power to carry a woman balanced upon his shoulders across the stage as the lights went out. Lovely to see Grace Song dancing!
Whew! (a Jennifer Muller world premiere) is the direct antithesis of her Miserere Nobis. Here, Peter Muller's jazzy score sets the dancers on a witty exploration of the frenetic 'busy-ness' of contemporary life. Pursuits, rejections, approaches and avoidances all pepper the ongoing vignettes with the dancers in soft pajama-type outfits of red, hot pink and wine. Seiko Fujita shows a comedic range that equals her dramatic commitment in the earlier Allegri, and Shiho Tanaka is a brilliant dead-pan actress. Caroline Kehoe and Michael Tomlinson are pursued/pursuer whilst Gen Hashimoto - one of New York's finest movers - dashes fleetingly about the space with unbridled energy and wryly expressive gestures. Elise King, Sonja Chung and Michelle Tara Lynch very attractively rounded out the cast of this light-hearted romp.